WDYT about people with money fundraising for their kids sports?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find it so tacky. Our team is really pushing this, and I cannot bring myself to ask friends to donate to my kids' activities. Do you do it anyway or ignore?

You are completely tone deaf. Not everyone on the team has it so easy, and rather than call out the 2-3 kids for whom raising the money is necessary, they give everyone the info. So you write a check and others fundraise. You do you, and maybe write the check for a little something extra to help the divorced kids family, the immigrant family, or the one who is cleaning the toilets at your house for you, since none of them cannot afford it as easily as you

I think you missed the point that OP implied this was about a travel team. These teams are a choice. You decide to pay. If you can’t afford to pay, you shouldn’t play.

Newsflash for you, at least a couple kids on that travel team are on scholarship, and not playing full price. These are the families that need the fundraising.

How do you peiple not know/understand this?

Highly location/sport dependent.

[Anonymous]

This is a way for them to get money from grandparents. Don’t ask friends.

[Anonymous]

There is a family in our neighborhood that keeps doing this and also inviting people to go to their kids' travel games. Nobody wants to drive an hour to go watch your kid's full-day travel baseball tournament.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m ok supporting the local public high school teams. I’m not ok supporting the private travel teams.

+1. Also, in my area, the high school fundraisers generally are asking for smaller sums of money ($10 raffle tickets or something like that) vs the private travel teams doing stuff where the minimum donation is $30.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find it so tacky. Our team is really pushing this, and I cannot bring myself to ask friends to donate to my kids' activities. Do you do it anyway or ignore?

You are completely tone deaf. Not everyone on the team has it so easy, and rather than call out the 2-3 kids for whom raising the money is necessary, they give everyone the info. So you write a check and others fundraise. You do you, and maybe write the check for a little something extra to help the divorced kids family, the immigrant family, or the one who is cleaning the toilets at your house for you, since none of them cannot afford it as easily as you

I think you missed the point that OP implied this was about a travel team. These teams are a choice. You decide to pay. If you can’t afford to pay, you shouldn’t play.

Newsflash for you, at least a couple kids on that travel team are on scholarship, and not playing full price. These are the families that need the fundraising.

How do you peiple not know/understand this?

A travel team “scholarship”. Is that what you really consider it to be? This is an elective pay to play sport. If you think the money given to little “Lionel” is a scholarship, you’re not seeing the big picture. Pay for your travel team, give out “scholarships” but don’t go asking for “fundraisers”. You (should) know exactly what you signed up for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When our kids need to fundraise for sports or scouts or whatever, we just give the donation ourselves and skip the product. We’re not rich but I’m not asking people we know to pay for our wants.

Our public high school coach requires the payer to provide 20+ email addresses for friends and family. And if you do not raise enough to cover the uniform / sweats, they will ask you to write a check. I'd rather just write the check.

[Anonymous]

If a kid comes to my door, I will always buy. I won't respond to blast emails about fundraising. I haven't had a team my kid is on ask to fundraiser or sell something but if I did I would just outright donate whatever money they want from each kid and take the write off (if possible).

In a previous team for one of my kids there was one child who literally lived in Section 8, needed a ride to every single practice, game and tournament, needed a scholarship to pay his fees and then needed someone to sponsor him for every single out of town tournament (take him, pay for his hotel, pay for his meals). He was a nice kid and he had no control over his circumstances. Unfortunately the club did not organize anything for him so it was up to a few of us parents to divide, conquer and pay. IMO this seemed like the only time fundraising would have been helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If a kid comes to my door, I will always buy. I won't respond to blast emails about fundraising. I haven't had a team my kid is on ask to fundraiser or sell something but if I did I would just outright donate whatever money they want from each kid and take the write off (if possible).

In a previous team for one of my kids there was one child who literally lived in Section 8, needed a ride to every single practice, game and tournament, needed a scholarship to pay his fees and then needed someone to sponsor him for every single out of town tournament (take him, pay for his hotel, pay for his meals). He was a nice kid and he had no control over his circumstances. Unfortunately the club did not organize anything for him so it was up to a few of us parents to divide, conquer and pay. IMO this seemed like the only time fundraising would have been helpful.

NP and just wanted to say I'm glad this world has good and generous people like you to step up and pay for that kid. Awesome.

[Anonymous]

I fork over whatever it is they are seeking to raise directly to the organization and tax the charitable deduction for my own children, for others, if the product they are selling is interesting, I may buy something, but mostly just ignore.

[Anonymous]

I hate fundraising. Period.

[Anonymous]

If all you need to do is sell 2,000 boxes of cookies, why don’t we just buy them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a kid comes to my door, I will always buy. I won't respond to blast emails about fundraising. I haven't had a team my kid is on ask to fundraiser or sell something but if I did I would just outright donate whatever money they want from each kid and take the write off (if possible).

In a previous team for one of my kids there was one child who literally lived in Section 8, needed a ride to every single practice, game and tournament, needed a scholarship to pay his fees and then needed someone to sponsor him for every single out of town tournament (take him, pay for his hotel, pay for his meals). He was a nice kid and he had no control over his circumstances. Unfortunately the club did not organize anything for him so it was up to a few of us parents to divide, conquer and pay. IMO this seemed like the only time fundraising would have been helpful.

NP and just wanted to say I'm glad this world has good and generous people like you to step up and pay for that kid. Awesome.

+2. You're a good person. I wish there were a way to organize donations for this specific situation (recognizing you also made a significant contribution of your time). God bless you.

[Anonymous]

If it's for a team that is legitimately underfunded and the kids wouldn't be able to play otherwise I'll happily donate.

If it's to subsidize Chad Chaddington, Jr.'s delusion that putting Chad Chaddington III on the travel team will ever get him close to a D1 school much less the Majors instead of just letting him play little league and have fun, not a chance in hell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find it so tacky. Our team is really pushing this, and I cannot bring myself to ask friends to donate to my kids' activities. Do you do it anyway or ignore?

We might make a small contribution ourselves, but we would never solicit like that. YMMV.

[Anonymous]

My family is in this situation now and it is tricky. We could easily pay for our own kids but the other families have less money (or so it seems) and do need to fundraise. There is a lot of peer pressure to fundraise (group activities, texts to kids about not forgetting to ask neighbors for $$$ etc) and it would be awkward for us to say "oh no, we are good." I don't think the other families have any idea how much money we have - we live in a small house, drive old cars, kids in public school - but we have invested well and saved a lot.

Anyway, we are currently planning to make a large anonymous donation plus require our kids to do some manual labor or fundraise (car washing etc). But it has been trickier than expected to keep them from hitting up our friends and neighbors.